Virgin Spain

by Waldo David Frank

. . . . . .

From the town, as from a smoldering fire, smoke. There are no chimneys; Allah takes care of the smoke. After the bright street, the house is a cavern. The eyes, refocused to the dark, observe a long, high chamber, its walls black with ages of grime, its ceiling stanchioned by wooden posts that shine like ebony. There is no table, there is no chair, there is no bed. Dry grass is piled in corners, and serves for sleeping. Four families live in this lower half of the house. Four women squat in its several quarters; about them nurslings, before them a little brasier to which the children feed chips of wood, shreds of rush. The women cut turnips, bake wheat for the couss-couss. There is a stair that is scarce a stair: ages of feet have worn it to an incline. The upper story has more light; there is a hole in the center of the ceiling which leads to the roof. If it rains, the water falls through the heart of the house; but light comes in, smoke rises out. Here, too, there is no furniture. A chicken pecks in the crumbled floor; an old woman weaves at a loom. Her hands know an immemorial process of weaving, like the mouth of her husband praying.

The roof is the domain of the women. The street is for the men and all that the street leads to. But the housetop is the street and the playground of women. On sunny afternoons of the cool season, here is their escape from the drudge and dark of their homes. This house is high among the houses whose flat roofs move away in waving whiteness. A minaret thrusts up ... there is a gap, a square ... then the packed counterpoint of roof and turning wall and wall again to the green dense at last of palms, to the gorge of the Oued, to the sand-stretch southward where the sun lies in a mist as in a sea of opal.

The white roofs are gay with the color of women. Veils are put aside. Babes suck at ruddy breasts. Red shawls and red babouches touch the color of laughter. Women are carefree. Even the onus of prayer that sits on Islam is not for them. Let them but bear children and hold the good will of their men.[1] One woman, the rich blood clear beneath the bronze of her cheek, presses to her bosom a child who will soon die. Children come and often children go. The way of the child, to manhood or the grave, is in the hand of Allah. A girl, candid and great-eyed with a flinty note upon her luscious flesh, like steel on velvet, holds to her lovely breast which motherhood has not distorted from its apple-rondure, a babe whose eyes are already shut with pus. She will have a blind son—perhaps a muedzin, perhaps a poet: certainly a Seer.

. . . . . .

When the sun is good, many women follow up the Oued, with their brood, for a day’s washing. The river is gracious within its precipitous banks. The winter sun, sweet like our sun of June, has yet the reverberant Saharan weight. It strikes the top of the hills, it rolls down over the clay-maze; it strikes the level sand, down once more it bounds into the gorge, over drenched bushes, over hanging rock and fills the Oued. Here, knee-deep, with their thin gowns lashed to the thigh and the rondures of their bodies speaking, stand women: and the sun comes to them. Other women lay the washed clothes on rocks and with bare feet dance on them, mangling and rinsing in song. The sun and the vigil of the hills, and the town distant, release the spirit of this flesh. Allah is far away, and the pure violence of Mohammed. Women are pagans again, and the Oued has gods. Children peal. Girls let fall their tunics and their breasts dance with their feet. Old women have eyes hot with memories, as they watch the crisp bodies of their daughters.

But beyond the Oued, beyond its walled mouth where the water disappears in sand, and beyond the date-palms, lies another town. It is more drear than its graveyard. So far, doubtless, in old days the river ran ere it had clotted and shortened its way with silt. The town is almost a ruin. A few children play, but the houses are silent. No windows break the seared patched blocks of clay. The graveyard is higher, and it has a wall. Here one can sit and watch the ruined town and the maze of gardens by the Oued and the palms, and the present town and the desert sea. The muedzin has thrust his call to sunset prayer. The muedzin is gone. The sun is gone. The mountains are sapphires in a cornelian heaven. The Sahara moves in copper from the town: grows argent: its dunes are swathed in mist like women’s bodies in irradiant shawls. The desert fades into a fume of opal under a bronze horizon.

Intricate designs stir in the graveyard chaos. Between the head stones and the foot stones the thin earth is raised so that the body may lightly rise to Heaven. (Jackals and dogs, as well as souls, find the shallow graves to their taste.) And now, to meet this subtle stir of dust, comes music. Common notes, sordid notes, between the sand and the sky. Drone of men in prayer, sudden motley of boys who sit in a black room and shout the Koran, girl laughter, donkey bray, banter—a music secret as this world. It comes with the night, swift, like any revelation. It fuses with the graveyard stones, with the world. The labyrinth of walls, enclosing gardens down to the Oued, is one with it. Fig tree, palm, volute Barbary cactus, winding path to the river, muddy river stretch, litter of refuse, excrement, manure, fuse with the music and the graveyard stones, rhyme in the oneness of Allah.

A late worker jogs past on a burro. A Caïd—Judge—swings with his basket-saddle on a mule. Another worker sticks his rod into the open sore on his burro’s haunch. On one side of the glimmering Oued is the town—a wall with many breaks, cobbles on mud, that lead into alleys and that grow into streets. The walls, within, flank out into a square from which turn several streets. The houses here are open to the night, and on the doorsteps before brasiers red with coal, sit women. Allah is one. They wear gay shawls, striped skirts. They wear massive barbarous bracelets, anklets, necklaces. Their faces, in the gloom, are heavy with designs: brow, cheek, chin painted with henna or with kohl. From eye to temple run delicate starry lines. And the hands are henna-splashed. When man approaches they sing the song of invitation. Behind them crouching on their brasiers, freshening their faces, gleams a room with a samovar and a couch. Now, the classic song of lust from their still lips. The crystal and the song of Islam! One note for all prayer, one note for all begging, one note for lust. Allah is one.

The whole town has caught the day’s fair fever. A man sits with a metal pipe whose saccade cadence flies ... splinters of steel ... into the night. And women dance. They move in strange reply to the music. For it is violent, swift and lean; it is the clang and charge of martial hoofs. But the women are slow, almost imperceptible their feet; almost moveless their thick bodies. The arms wave languid like branches of the willow. The whole town in the dead day’s fever. Dance and laughter and flame blossom in the shadows of the street. A ballad singer sits among the girls: he sings of the chieftain whose head was left upon the field and how the Prophet came and joined it to his body, for the Resurrection. But girls dance in a rising tide of Spring. His hands upon the drum make running of swift steeds, his voice is a javelin: the girls move like their breathing breasts.